Scotland has just lost its guaranteed Champions League spot from season 2025 onwards after Viktoria Plzen of Czechia secured a quarter final slot in the Europa Conference League, meaning Czechia goes past Scotland in the coefficient, despite the failure of both Prague teams to go through in the higher Europa League.

This means that whoever wins the Scottish Premiership this season will be the second and last beneficiary of Rangers’ incredible work in Europe the past five seasons in securing the guaranteed Champions League group spot, with it disappearing next campaign.

We slightly mis-phrased a recent article in which we reported the ramifications of that first paragraph and made it sound like it would affect next season, so apologies for that miscommunication.

But it does apply next season onwards, and thanks to Plzen scraping past Servette on penalties to make the quarters of Europe’s newest club competition, Czechia are now to go past Scotland.

Of course, had Rangers won tonight and got through to the quarters themselves Plzen’s result wouldn’t have mattered as much; they (or another Czech side) had to overall exceed Rangers’ results/progress this season.

Sadly, they have already done that with their penalty win.

This means Rangers critically must win the Premiership this season, because the last automatic group spot is at stake, and frankly we do not want yet ANOTHER summer qualifying for a European group spot.

As for the season after that, the spot is gone, but good work next season from both/either Old Firm in Europe would potentially bring it back the season after that, but this is a long way down the line.

Rangers critically must win the SPL this season, a UCL group spot and the massively-improved pot of cash thanks to competition restructuring means the kitty would be closer to £40M than the current £20M. Just for being in the group spot. And that’s before gate receipts and TV cash.

So it’s utterly essential now to win the league.

For so, so many reasons.